Antenna Theater
This page lists past Antenna Theater productions from 1980 to present. You will soon be able to download PDF files with detailed information and press coverage of the individual shows below.
201o: magic bus
A ninety minute multimedia adventure, taking place aboard a customized bus driving through San Francisco. The show evokes the era and politics of the Summer of Love through a mix of oral histories, rock n roll, live action, 3D and video projections while the bus rolls through North Beach, the Haight and Golden Gate Park.
• 2010/11 Union Square, San Francisco, CA
• 2010 San Francisco Performing Arts Festival, CA
2008: Transforming Art
An interactive exhibition featuring sculptural works, anaglyph drawings (3-D), infinite mirrors, slotted sea creatures and furniture and shadows. Hardman calls it, “an experimental funhouse where scientific understanding of perception is manipulated and presented in an artistic context.”
• 2008 Presidio Gallery, San Francisco, CA, extended for six months
• 2005 Art Works Downtown Gallery, San Rafael, CA
• 2004 Bay Model Gallery, Sausalito, CA
2007: Big Brother
A site specific adventure commissioned by the Theatre Arts Department of Sonoma State University. Hardman worked with theater majors over two semesters to develop the script and to test a new use of MP3 player technology. Groups of audients receive sound tracks with differing instructions and thus experience the story segments distinctively. This workshop production was inspired by George Orwell’s 1984. Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA.
2006: High School
Originally commissioned by the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 1981, “High School” is a narrated walk-through of a high school campus from the perspective of the students. Audients travel through the school, listening to student voices while interacting with student actors and puppets. The sound track, path and sculptural sets are unique to each school. Drama students assist in the creation of the piece by conducting interviews with their peers and others at the school. The first version of “High School” was the first use of walkman technology by an artist.
• 2006 Berkeley High School, Berkeley, CA
• 2004 Galileo High School, San Franciso, CA
• 2002 Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley, CA
• 1981 Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley, CA
2006: Fire and Ice
A site specific dramatizaton of an overnight tugboat fire and unprecedented ice storm that occurred on the Sausalito waterfront in 2006. For the event, the tugboat was anchored off the Bay Model Gallery where the pre-recorded audio was broadcast to the shorebound audience. The sound track featured the actual voices of those involved in the real event. Bay Model, Sausalito, CA.
2005: A Body of Water
Asking “When was the last time you took a sunset walk on a wave-washed beach?,” Antenna invited audients to experience a seaside sculpture garden while listening to an audio drama concerning our relationship to this ocean planet. Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California.
2002-03: Euphor!um
A walk-through dreamscape of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan, featuring digital audio effects, infinite mirrors, and a few Coney Island funhouse tricks thrown in for good measure.
• 2002-03 presented by SoHo Theatre at the Round House, Camden, London, England
• 2001 invited guest art work, Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, Nevada
• 2000-02 premiered at the Presidio, S.F., CA, extended runs totalled eight months
2002: Sands of Time
An outdoor interactive public art project that blends science, art, history, and popular culture to examine the meaning of the millennium. Carved into 1,000 yards of beachfront, this performance sculpture is designed to resemble a gigantic Zen Garden.
• 2002 Earthday Celebration, Santa Monica, CA
• 1999 Invited feature artist, Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, NV
• 1999 Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA
• 1998 Rodeo Beach, Sausalito, CA
Click to download a PDF on Sands of Time
2000: Artery
Each audient is transformed into the main character of a noir-like mystery thriller and sent through a 17 room performance maze.
• 2000 Vantage Theatre, San Diego, CA
• 1985 New Theatre, Seattle, WA
• 1984 Performing Garage, New York, NY
• 1984 Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC
• 1983 Cervantino Festival, Guanojuato and Mexico City, Mexico
• 1982 The Mill Valley Post Office Annex, Mill Valley, CA
2000: big Bang
A millennium celebration with fire eaters, stilt walkers, giant puppets, a sound and light show, and a giant performing waterclock counting off all 13 billion years of time since the Big Bang. On the waterfront, Sausalito, CA.
1998: Pandemonium
A nighttime outdoor theater adventure in the forests and meadows of the Marin Headlands. The show is an homage to Pan and the metaphysics of Springtime and a send-up of the spring wedding season. The production features audience members in headphones walking through the woods to encounter 35-foot puppets, masked actors, and site-specific lighting effects.
• 1998 Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA
• 1997 Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA
1997: Star*Light
Loosely based on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, this performance examines the tension between technology and nature—specifically artificial light and natural light. The production mixes giant puppets, masked actors, shadow shows and dance with circus performance such as stilt walkers and vertical rope performance. Performed in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA.
1995: Skin and Bones/Flesh and Blood
A site-specific theater performance at a major recycling center which examines physical, political, and metaphysical borders and their impact on the “common citizen.” The production features a bilingual collage of the voices of Marin County residents broadcast to audients through localized FM radio transmission. Actors portray newpapers, skeletons, doctors and others. Marin County Recycling Center, San Rafael, CA.
1995: Etiquette of the Undercaste
An interactive performance installation, which leads visitors through a maze of thirteen rooms where they experience poverty and powerlessness first hand. Upon entering the installation, the visitor “dies” and is “reborn” into a life characterized from birth by a succession of ever-worsening circumstances, ultimately leading to homelessness.
• 1995 UCLA Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
• 1992 Experimental Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• 1991 Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA
• 1988 SOMAR Arts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA
1994: Enola/Alone
An interactive theater maze that puts each visitor into the boots of a World War II bomber pilot. The show combines elements from museum exhibits, radio theater, carnival funhouses, and audience participation to create a personal and deeply affecting experience concerning the effects of bombing. Presidio warehouse, San Francisco, CA.
1994: Making Waves
Commissioned by the Falkirk Cultural Center, this combination of theater, installation art, and historical retrospective features artifacts, photographs, masks, puppets, video, and audio from Antenna Theater’s performance history. This exhibition was in honor of Chris Hardman, recipient of the Falkirk Cultural Center’s Fourth Annual LifeWork Award. Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael, CA.
1993: On sight (In Sausalito)
A site-specific performance using an entire city as its stage. Audience members encounter scenes in private homes, City Hall, local businesses, public parks, and city streets. The production blends Bunraku, shadow performance, cubist-constructivist masks, and an interactive radio broadcast to explore the emergence of bohemian lifestyles, art and philosophies in post-WWII America. Sausalito, CA.
1993: All you can Eat
Commissioned by Earth Drama Lab, this original farce and grand processional satirizes Bay Area history, illustrating how man’s greedy appetite has unbalanced the environment.
• 1993 California Coastal Cleanup Celebration, Bay Model, Sausalito, CA
• 1991 Earth Day Celebration, Aquatic Park, Sausalito, CA
1992: THE APPEARANCE OF CIVILIZATION
An outdoor performance event on the nighttime beach, developed in response to the Columbus Quincentennial. The play draws from 16th century documents, the testimony of Holocaust survivors, Vietnam veterans, and others to draw disturbing parallels between Columbus’ time and our own. Rodeo Beach, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Sausalito, CA.
1991: CAVEAT EMPTOR! BUYER BEWARE!
An epic multi-media stage play featuring masked actors and a pre-recorded soundtrack. The play is structured into three alternating stories dealing with the historical exploitation of the unsuspecting masses by those who sell the idea of security. Presented at Theater Artaud, San Francisco, CA.
1990: ADJUSTING THE IDLE
This interactive play consists of seventeen simultaneous portable stereo events ion the subject of the American fascination with the automobile. Audients participate in stage events, such as convincing a “parent” to let them drive, attending traffic school, and buying a car. It was commissioned for CARPLAYS by the Mark Taper Forum and the Los Anageles Museum of Contemporary Art.
• 1990 New Theatre, Seattle, WA
• 1985 Theater Artaud, San Francisco, CA
• 1984 LAMOCA, Los Angeles CA
1989: The Grid
Commissioned for the opening of the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, this interactive audio tour led each audient through the new facility, learning the history of the site and the intent of the Center’s architect, Peter Eisenman. Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
1988: RADIO INTERFERENCE
Developed as an artist-in-residence project at the Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this show explores the subject of communications through the use of infrared headset receiver technology, live actors, and the audlient’s interaction with thirteen different theater events.
• 1988 FEMA warehouse, Fort Baker, Sausalito, CA
• 1987 Media Lab, MIT, Cambridge, MA
1986: THE NEW SEASON
An experiment in improvisational broadcasting where the audio messages of selected television programs are replaced with an original soundtrack via radio. A collaboration with KPFA, a public radio station, Berkeley, CA.
1985: DRACULA IN THE DESERT
This performance piece tells the story of Dracula’s retirement to New Mexico utilizing 3-D effects, portable stereos, masked actor/dancers and original music. Presented at The Warehouse, Sausalito, CA.
1985: RUSSIA
A stage play involving slide projections, sound effects. Masked actors, and audio collage to explore the American perception of the Cold-War Soviet Union. Featured at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.
• 1985 The Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY
• 1985 Theater Artaud, San Francisco, CA
1985: FAIRPLAY
Originally commissioned for the San Francisco Fair, this series of twenty-five audio tape events on the subject of San Francisco history and culture leads audients in such activities as ringing cable car bells, signing the U.N. Charter, singing with Valentino, shooting rats with Bubonic Plague and being emprisoned on Alcatraz. Fort Mason Pier, San Francisco, CA.
1984: AMNESIA
Four different memory paths are chosen in random order as each audient struggles to regain their sense of self. The interactive sets are created entirely of slotted wood pieces, highly colored. Masked actors assist the audient through this swirl of pattern.
• 1984 UCLA, Olympic Arts Festival, Los Angeles, CA
• 1984 YMCA, San Francisco, CA
• 1983 Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, Mill Valley, CA
1982: MOVING SCULPTURES
Over a period of months, plywood figures of local residents follow the paths of their real life counterparts—jogging, shopping, and walking the dog—in five Marin County, California cities.
1982: PINK PROM
Sixteen actors in prom dress perform to pre-recorded stereo choreography. A commission of the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, Mill Valley, CA.
1982: VACUUM
A blend of dance, performance sculpture, taped narrative and original music, this stage play, developed from man-on-the-street interviews about door-to-door salesmen, housewives, and vacuums, is an inside look into the life of a man who sells emptiness.
• 1982 Toured to five cities in Germany, Rotterdam and Paris
• 1982 Performing Garage, New York City, NY
• 1981 Herbst Theater, San Francisco, CA
• 1981 Red Barn, Sausalito, CA